Well fellas, I finally broke down and did it. I'm upgrading from the old 27" RCA tube. "About time" you say; brothers, you're preachin' to the choir. On the boat coming to me is my brand new Panny TH-50PHD8UK . It's a professional model so no tuner, no speakers; just the monitor. What I'm wondering is: between the 50", 3805, EP-350, DVD player, VCR, and future DirectTV reciever is this too much load for one outlet? Anybody have any practical (or theoretical) experience with this? The other option is to put in a "clock outlet" behind the TV running parallel off the either the dining room outlet or light switch (since apperently against code to just run a powercord through the wall) but I'd rather not do it if I don't have to.

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Plasma screens do suck down power like you wouldn't believe. You'll be drawing a lot of amps if all your equipment is going onto one circuit. I'd say you should have at least 20 amps going to that circuit if you can't split anything up. Check your breaker panel to see what type of breaker controlls the outlet in question. Keep in mind that you can't just swap out the breaker without also upgrading the wiring. A 20-amp circuit requires a minimum of 12-gauge wire to meet code. A 10-amp circuit requires 14-gauge.

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hmm, I'm not sure what the bkr rating is. And I'm not about to put pants on and go out there now to check it, dammit! I'll have to check later. Oh yeah, and I was planning on hooking this bad boy up too. It might be the straw that broke the camels back!

_________________________ Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Is that an Atari 2600? Sweet...I dig the woodlike paneling. Does it still work?

I remember back in the day my family had one. That was some very good times. Those joysticks took some serious abuse from us. After a while the rubber part would loosen up and detach, making it difficult to keep a good grip on the controller. (that sounded dirty)

hells yeah it's a 2600! actually that's some random 2600 pic off the net, but the one i have is just like it. It's still over at my folks house, but last time I checked it still worked, even after my old dog nearly chewed through the joystick cable back in '82. i figured having the Atari right under the plasma would be a nice mix of old and new, plus who doesn't want 50" of Pitfall? LOL!

_________________________ Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

i would say to try to put the sub on another outlet, just because at moments the sub will draw a decent amount of power. Maybe to a different location in the room if at all possible. Your plasma either uses 250 or 257 watts, and at 120volts this equals 2 amps aproximatly.. so, theres 2 amps gone the 350 uses 200watts at 120v->1.6amps so were at 3.6amps total on your outlet. I don’t think that your dvd+vcr+directTV will use as much power as your sub woofer. So well give those items 1.6ams again

so now were at 5.26amps. I would imagine that you will be ok, I don’t think you would need a 20amp fuse..

but that’s just me… I have my amp,processor,dvd player and cable box connected to 1 outlet. And my amp is 175X5 watts. So I'm at 875watts on one outlet, which is considerably more power than you are using on one outlet. So I would say your ok, I would imagine your 2600 would use .5amps? so youll be at 5.76amps total…

if you don’t know about eletrical theory, or any equations, and wondering how the hell I got all my numbers, you can read it here, this page explains it pretty good.